"Creativity is just connecting things."
Two weeks ago, I paid a visit to my alma mater, DePauw University, to give a lecture as part of The Robert C. McDermond Center Speaker Series.
This hit me hard as a pretty trippy, full-circle moment. And a total honor.
Twenty-plus years ago, I was on the other side of that same podium, in that same ballroom—a shaggy, chlorine-and-beer infused Management Fellow, showing up for free lunch, unsweetened iced tea, and career reflections from an impressive array of distinguished alumni who had climbed into leadership roles at places like Goldman Sachs, Eli Lilly, Ernst & Young, and more.
***
DePauw is a small, quintessentially liberal arts school.
There was no "Business" major or B-school when I went through DPU. What was offered for business and entrepreneurship minded students, instead, was an honors program called the Management Fellows, which DePauw describes on the website as something that:
Integrates the study of business and entrepreneurship with the liberal arts education. Includes classes in economics, accounting, ethics and statistics; lectures by business leaders from across the country; and a full time, paid, semester-long internship. Students may major in any discipline offered at DePauw. Our students have majored in economics, music, computer science, English literature, religious studies, political science and communication; no discipline at DePauw is off-limits.
When I was a Management Fellow, most of our required classes sat within the Economics department. To the extent that it would have made a ton sense for me to just take that one more Econ class to earn a minor—or a handful more for the major.
But the beauty of the DePauw experience, for me, was that I didn’t have to stay in one lane. I chose History as my major because it interested me.
I loaded up on English and Philosophy electives because I liked the content and the professors were cool. I minored in Latin American & Caribbean Studies, something I'm sure my parents were thrilled about.
Returning to my beloved undergrad campus to offer career advice to a room full of former “me’s” put me into quite an introspective headspace.
I kept asking myself, what did I need to hear back then? Frankly, when I was in that seat, I had very little idea what I wanted to do for a "career." Per se.
Weekly field notes on communication, craft, and the making of Story Camp.
I also felt like a total misfit within this well-oiled program. I mean, I tried to play the game. I applied to the well-established internships. But if I'm being honest, I still don't know what a "KPMG" is. As such, I was never largely surprised when the swift rejections rolled in. Like, "yeah, I did wear flip flops to that interview. I get it."
Still, the whiffs were piling up, and it was starting to get me down. If I wasn't placed for my required internship soon, I was out of the program.
"I just want to do something creative."
I remember conversations with our (very patient) program director, Dr. Gary Lemon. I kept telling him that I wanted to do "something creative."
What the heck was he supposed to do with that?
Well, one fateful day, some stars aligned. The incredible DePauw alumna, Kathy Patterson Vrabeck, called Dr. Lemon out of the blue with a request:
“Hey Gary, do you have anyone who might be interested in a Global Brand Management internship at Activision, out here in Santa Monica?”
Gary was probably like: "I have exactly one."
So yeah, I ended up being in the right place at the right time, and thanks to Kathy's generous offer to extend an internship to someone from her own alma mater, a door opened for me into a world of marketing and advertising that I ended up loving, and working in ever since—in one form or another.
I have lots of stories from that internship, and from my ensuing career in marketing, design, and creative entrepreneurship. But the real story I wanted to leave with these DePauw students wasn't my own.
It's this one.
In 1988, Dan Wieden—co-founder of Wieden+Kennedy (which for me is the greatest ad agency of all time)—was up late the night before a massive pitch for Nike.
The company had asked W+K to produce its first real television campaign. There were five spots, for five different products, created by five different teams.
Dan Wieden was stuck on something. They were good spots. But all completely different. He felt the campaign needed something to hold it together. Some connective thread. A line that could unify these seemingly disparate spots.
The line he came up with that night was inspired by the last words of a convicted murderer facing a firing squad in Utah.
Turns out, a decade earlier, there was a bad man named Gary Gilmore who murdered two people in Utah. When convicted, he insisted on being executed. And when asked for his final words, he gave his executioners three:
"Let's do it."
Dan Wieden, who described himself as "not a great student, just really curious"—at some point, read that story of Gary Gilmore, and reflected on it. Instead of glossing over and turning the page like everyone else, Wieden paused and really thought about what that would have taken in that moment to say something like that. Then, he filed it away.
Years later, under pressure, it resurfaced.
Wieden remembered the line, tweaked one word, pushed for Phil Knight and the team to give it a chance, and the campaign launched.
In the decade that followed Nike's "JUST DO IT" rollout, sales burst from $877 million in 1987 to $9.2 billion in 1997, with segment market share soaring to a mind-popping 43% (up from 18% pre-campaign).
Three words... loosely borrowed from a death row inmate's parting shot.
Three words that changed the course of a company, made a genuine impact on global pop culture, and became the most recognizable advertising slogan in history (btw, I recommend you listen to Dan tell the story himself).
I love this story because it gets to something deeper:
What creativity actually is.
Also... what it isn't.
In 2017, researchers at University of Padova and Duke University mapped the white matter connections in the brains of college students. They compared the most creative individuals to the least creative.
What they found was surprising: It wasn’t that creative people had more activity in a certain part of the brain (the whole "right brain" thing).
Instead, the most creative people had significantly more connections between the right and left hemispheres.
Creativity isn't a region, it's a network.
It is, quite literally, the density of bridges between different parts of your mind.
Steve Jobs was well ahead of this, and put it down in an interview so famously:
“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.”
Dan Wieden wasn't special because he was born creative. I mean, he was wildly creative. But the foundation for that creativity was very likely rooted in the simple fact that he was a deeply curious guy who noticed things and synthesized them. He paid attention to the world around him, asked questions, collected and connected experiences.
When you think of nearly any breakthrough idea, chances are it did not materialize out of thin air. Instead, most "aha" creative moments were the direct result of someone observing their experiences and connecting them.
Sara Blakely didn't study fashion design. She sold fax machines.
But she noticed how frustrating it was when her pantyhose bunched up under her clothes. She saw something, connected some dots (er, busted out some scissors), and then leveraged her incredible people skills and drive to turn Spanx into a billion-dollar company.
Name a creative breakthrough in the world. I am going to bet it could be traced to someone connecting their insights and experiences from two seemingly different worlds.
***
As we wrapped up the luncheon over a round of Q&A, a student asked me if she was at a disadvantage because she wanted to go into marketing—DePauw doesn’t offer "Marketing" classes.
I urged her not to think about it that way.
Marketing changes EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.
It is best learned on the job. And then relearned... because, see above.
The best marketers I know are deeply curious. They're lifelong learners.
They're some of the best writers I know. They understand and have mastered storytelling.
They also have what HBR refers to as “contextual intelligence”—an ability to connect ideas across different environments and (importantly) know when, where, and how to adapt them.
Most of my favorite marketers did not "study marketing."
Christopher Lynch (CMO of Sovos) has a background in journalism.
Jen Jones (CMO of Siteimprove) studied neuroscience and rode on her college equestrian team.
Colin Fleming (CMO of ServiceNow) was a professional race car driver.
Dan Wieden allegedly wanted to be a playwright or a screenwriter.
For what it's worth: I studied history... then advertising... then I noticed a bunch of marketers struggling with PowerPoint, and offered help. Now I host events for them to take it further.
Some of our paths look wiggly. Squiggly. Meandery. Inefficient.
But I think that might be the whole point.
*****
To those mighty Tigers who showed up for my session, thank you for coming! I truly appreciate the amazing questions and chats. I want to double down on this and tell you one more time: your liberal arts education isn't some soft alternative to a "real education." It is, neurologically speaking, a direct path to building a creative brain.
So keep building a habit of learning from all the things, take those weird electives, swim outside your lane, chase new hobbies, meet all the people, and seek to broaden your understanding of the human experience.
You never know when one of those bridges will light up and help you change the world.
✌️💚🏕️
Don't forget to write back!
Mikey
